But all this mutual and well‐placed affection was now to find the common termination of all earthly enjoyments. That happy and entire union which had subsisted for nearly five‐and‐thirty years was drawing to a close. The king and queen, after taking leave of their daughter Margaret, now duchess of Brabant, left their palace in Westminster for the midland counties. Edward had given directions for a parliament to be summoned to meet at Clipston, a royal palace in Sherwood Forest; and in the interim, he hoped to enjoy his favourite recreation of the chase. He also began to receive, about this time, frequent applications from Scotland, and he probably meant to go northward on that business. The queen, as usual, was with him, or near him; but while he was moving about during September, she seems to have remained at Hardby, near Lincoln. We find by mention of her physicians, and of medicine purchased for her at Lincoln, that she had an illness of some duration. It is described as a lingering disease, or slow fever. Hardby was a manor belonging to a family of the name of Weston, and we observe a sir John Weston in the queen’s service. The house was probably placed by the family at the queen’s disposal, as a quieter place for a sick person than the palace of Clipston, where the parliament was about to assemble.
It is usually said that Edward was on his road to Scotland, the queen slowly following him, and that she was taken ill on the journey, and died before he could return to her. But it has been recently shown that he remained in the vicinity of Hardby during the whole of her illness.[30] The parliament was held at Clipston—the king being present at the end of October, and it sat until the second week in November, when he returned to the sick room. We find him at Hardby from the 20th to the 28th of November, on which day the queen died.[31]
For two or three days silence reigns at Hardby. There is an entire cessation of all public business; as if the powerful mind of the king had been, for the moment, utterly prostrated. But, after this pause, we find the widowed monarch at Lincoln, where he doubtless went to issue his orders for the funeral. And all the measures he took with reference to this object and to the matters which followed, and which were connected with it, give proof of the depth of his feeling for his departed consort. It has been said, with great truth, that “this funeral procession was one of the most striking spectacles that England has ever witnessed.”[32]